Nothing
by KuzAnn
Summary: Being trapped in the Blank Dimension again gives Qilby too much time to think. Prelude to "Fallen".


He knew it would happen eventually. It happened last time too, but he had chalked it up to his running frantically about in a panic and succumbing to exhaustion then. No, it seemed such a thing was part of the design of this place, rather than a result of his own futile struggles to escape.

This place. A white void, a contradiction in and of itself. Endlessly open, yet closed in upon itself. Filled with light and yet so completely empty. An infinite blank page for which he lacked the proper brush. Blank page... Maybe this was how all pocket dimensions started, before their makers began to shape them as they willed. It was so hastily made in the beginning after all, and there had been no reason to add more... Save for the single occupant and a way to keep him alive.

The "base state" was what he had come to call it. An act of entropy, perhaps, like heat dispersing until all temperature was uniform. Just enough energy left within to keep him alive and barely conscious, while the rest was drained away and assimilated into the white void. It slowed his thinking, made it difficult to move; eventually every thought would come to him at the crawling pace of a glacier, grinding past and into oblivion to allow room for the next. Eventually, eventually. He could feel it starting, but he had yet to reach that state at this point.

It had started as a growing ache deep in his bones, and spread until every fiber of his being moaned in weary agony. All traces of power from the Eliacube were already gone, the first things to be taken before his body's natural power began to be pilfered as well. He'd allowed the few flower petals that had accompanied him here to drift away once he noticed the black pigment in his nails was gone; it was no use bothering to hold onto them, not when they were going to be lost to some far corner of the void in the end anyway.

At times the Blank Dimension was inconsistent about what sort of terrain it wanted to be. Sometimes the bit you were leaning against was hard like a floor or a wall, while at others you could drift off with nothing solid to touch until it changed again. He slumped forward. This time it stayed solid and caught him like a piece of solid ground, but he knew that wouldn't last; eventually it would fade and he would drift off "somewhere else" until he bumped into another solid bit. The concept of gravity was meaningless. Up was down as well as side to side, back and forth, and even absolute stillness all at once. It couldn't decide on what it wanted to be, because its creator had never wanted it to be anything more than it had been at the moment of its creation.

He could still think at relatively normal speed now, but it was only a matter of time before everything slowed to an agonizing crawl. Hah, _time_... That was meaningless here with no consistent way to keep it. Counting heartbeats, breaths didn't work because of how slow those became, and how slow the act of counting itself would eventually become. There was no way his mind would be able to keep up eventually, it made the entire exercise utterly pointless. What did it matter anyway? Was he going to _brag_ about how long he'd been stuck in here the next time he was out?

Something at the back of his mind surfaced, and bit. He'd been trying to avoid it. Trying to avoid thinking about it. The reason he'd been trapped here a second time. Anxiety scratched at the edges of his consciousness before he shoved it back down again. No, try to avoid it a little longer, save it for when there was simply nothing else to do, maybe that would dull the pain a bit.

_The reason I'm here..._

Shoving it away was more difficult now. Was it because he was losing energy, or because it was simply unavoidable?

_It was worth it to me._

He clung to the notion now, just as he'd clung to it when questioned by his sister. It had to be worth it. It had to be! If it wasn't, then that would mean— He stamped down on the conclusion before it had a chance to form, but it began to spring back as soon as he let up. It rose again like some horrifying monster of the deeps before he managed to quash it again.

_Worth it to me? How does that even make sense?_

All his knowledge, experience, all his reasoning and intellect, and where had he ended up? Where had his people ended up thanks to him? How could any _rational_ individual even begin to think that what happened was worth this? The rich, glorious culture of his people had been shattered, and the survivors were now left with only dim pathetic fragments to patch back together and substitute in its place. And it was all his fault. He'd done it twice. _Twice!_ He thought everything would turn out fine in the end because _he_ could remember it, he could remind them of what their culture was if they ever drifted too far, if things became too distant from what they once knew. Despite those sacrifices the people itself would survive, would grow stronger and wiser for it. But now that knowledge had been locked away in this miserable empty place right along with him, perhaps never to see the light of _any_ star ever again. It was worthless now.

Worthless. Foolish. _How foolish_... What was the point with things as they were now? How could he have been so stupid?

The memory of his boredom drifted back in reply. Boredom. What do _normal people_ know of boredom? Year after year he slogged through every day like someone in a dream as the monotony, the staleness of everything gutted him as slowly and painfully as the dull edge of a knife. It felt like his soul was being ground down into nothingness, like life wasn't real anymore. Even when small parts changed, the whole was still the same. It was agony, even his scientific discoveries and pursuits, that brief feeling of accomplishment when he cracked something, even that couldn't ward the feeling off for long. It came back. It _always _came back, and it always seemed to do it faster than before.

And then there was the fact that he was truly one of a kind. Forced to watch as everyone he cared about died and never came back, or died only to be reborn as a close approximation of who they used to be. They always started the same, but every time the context would make them different from the life they'd lived before, even if it was only a small shift. What _was_ a person? An amalgamation of all their life experiences, of the slow spectrum of change that each life followed. Strip the information away, and what was left?

And why? _Why was he the only one?_ Eliatrope had a hand in their creation, why did she decide he needed this burden, and that he would need to carry it alone? Would it have been so much to ask to make _two_? To allow his own sister to remember him as he remembered her? And yet when he asked, when he _dared_ to question why things were made to be this way, his only reply was silence. Empty crushing silence. He lost faith in Eliatrope long ago, because of that. All other Eliatropes looked to their goddess as a mother, but not him. Not after what she'd done, what she'd condemned him to.

That was why. He was already trapped back then, and yet this wretched prison was so much worse. That slow plodding nightmare at least had _variety,_ even if that felt superficial. But this, _this place_ was boredom distilled and perfected until there was nothing else left. Nothing but him, his thoughts, and what little breath he was spared to complain with.

He had been desperate back then, and he had tried to tell them. They didn't listen, but how could they ever really understand? They were lucky. They were allowed to live in the moment, to be excited for the future. But not him. The past followed him wherever he went, it was as much a part of his being as his body and soul. The moment was the same as countless others he had lived through before, and the future could only contain what had already been there in the past, in one form or the other.

Bringing it up made them... Uncomfortable. It was too alien, too different from what they experienced every day of their lives. And with that lack of understanding came that crushing sense of isolation, the horrible aching loneliness. His sister was the only one who kept trying to understand, but even she couldn't quite grasp it. At times he'd felt guilty for burdening her with that, and eventually he'd stopped bothering to bring it up altogether...

_Shinonome..._

And Shinonome, what had he done for her in the end, after all she'd done and tried to do for him? He got her killed, left her isolated and alone in their Dofus for thousands of years, and now he'd done it again. It was pathetic. All care for her had been shoved aside by the burning need to find vindication for what had been lost...

He slammed down on the thought before it could go further, and it slunk away to the back of his mind again. But he knew it would be back. It _always_ found its way back every time doubt started to creep in.

_It was worth it to me._

_It was worth it to me._

_It was worth it to me._

Words, phrases, begin to lose meaning with repetition. Mere collections of letters and syllables if repeated too much. He worried over what he would do when that finally happened. There would be nothing to keep the thoughts back if the phrase lost its meaning.

He tried to think of nothing instead, and stopped almost immediately. After his first stay in the Blank Dimension, the very concept of nothingness had become terrifying. Before being trapped here the first time he'd never thought he would ever come to fear silence, to fear stillness. Out in the real world, true silence was difficult to find; the real world breathed and pulsed with life, and even the quietest of places would have background noise of some sort. But not here. Even the sound of his own heartbeat was muted as the void drained the sound away to nothing, and every time he'd come close to silence out in the real world after his first stay, he'd felt the terror well up from the depths again and threaten to consume him.

There would be no thinking of nothing if he could avoid it. Why add more nothing to what was already a void? Somehow that made it even more scary, to think that this place of nothingness could somehow get _bigger_.

The thought he was trying to avoid crept back toward the front, but he found that he was beginning to lose the will to force it back. Had the entropy really progressed that far already? He tried to move his arm, and managed only a slow twitch. Ah... Yes, it seemed so.

_Is it still worth it to me?_

He was trapped here. What remained of his people was now comprised of children and a single ancient dragon who had an inkling of what the old ways were like, while the other might not even remember now thanks to so many years spent on the World of Twelve. Their original planet was lost, and now they would be forced to find a place in a world that didn't even want them. With only a single child as their ambassador, however strong he was, it would take a lot to gain the acceptance they needed.

_And I just made it worse..._

He was too tired to swat the treacherous thought away. It was true. Stealing the Eliacube only gave them more of an excuse to distrust his kind, and they had already been afraid... Yugo's strength scared them, made them suspicious. They refused to bow to any flesh and blood creature, even as they bowed to their precious gods. It was already a long road toward gaining acceptance and trust, and his actions had only succeeded in making it longer and more twisted.

Most of them had been so petty anyway, squabbling away like children as he sat there and listened. It had been easy to think he could simply throw them away for the sake of his goal, even though it was a shame the decent ones would die along with them. Sacrifices were necessary, after all. You had to give in order to gain. It was... It was the right thing to do, he was doing it for his people, so those who died wouldn't have died in vain.

_I didn't want them to die for nothing._

It had to be worth it. It had to be. If it wasn't even worth it to him, what did that mean? It meant their deaths were meaningless. The result of his foolish, selfish actions. He could pretend it was for the sake of his people but in the end he had only done it for his own sake. A temporary escape from boredom, and when his people had finally found a nice place to settle down again he just had to go and _do it again._ The thought that the pain might come back had scared him so much, he couldn't think of any solution other than trying to make them move again.

That was when things began to go horribly wrong. Instead of retreating to the Zinit, every able-bodied adult among them chose to stand alongside the Council and fight Orgonax with everything they had, but still it wasn't enough. Wave after wave, slaughtered near-effortlessly by the Mechasme's massive hand. And still they kept coming. They had to, with only the elders left to protect their children. It still wasn't enough. Orgonax killed every last one of them, slowly picked the Council members off one by one as he kept on coming. In their desperation the elders did the last thing they could, one final act to save the future of their race. They gave every last bit of wakfu in their bodies to tear the fabric of space itself, opening the way to Emrub where the children would be safe.

And then they found out. The rest of the council found out what he did. They were appalled, disgusted. The fragmented remains of their leadership did the only thing they could come up with, and locked him in here.

Traitor. It was the correct label, but it stung nonetheless. It hurt every time he heard the word leave someone's lips, cut like a knife aimed at his heart. _Traitor._ Acting only for your own sake, throwing countless lives away because you couldn't come up with any better solution. And that notion was painful, too. He had the widest breadth of knowledge of any Eliatrope, he was the most intelligent, the greatest innovator, and yet that was the best he could come up with in an attempt to save himself. To throw his peoples' lives away not once, but _twice_ for his own sake while pretending that he was doing it to fulfill some grand destiny.

And where was the traitor now? Locked in this blank prison again, his sister disgraced and confined for the rest of eternity, his people a mere fragment of what they once were with their future hanging by a thread even now. There had been no doubt that the events weren't "worth it" in any sense to the Eliatrope people for quite some time, but he kept telling himself it was worth it to him. It was a foolish lie he'd clung to, an attempt to spare himself the crushing guilt of realizing they'd _all died for nothing_.

_It wasn't..._

Something pricked at the corners of his eyes, already half-closed from forced lethargy. He flinched, then realized what it was. Tears. He'd shed those while leading Adamai into the depths of the Zinit, too, and for some reason he'd felt the need to hide them when noticed. It was only natural to cry over those who were lost, why hide it? But he'd felt ashamed somehow, for crying over what happened, ashamed to let Adamai see him cry. He'd wiped them away, changed the subject, and thankfully the dragonet had followed along and let the matter lie.

_It wasn't..._

A hot, full feeling gathered just behind his eyes and forehead, but his face could only manage turning the corners of his mouth down a fraction more than before. His face ached, unable to give proper form to the grief he so desperately needed to express. Grief that would have flooded out to drown everything else. But the Blank Dimension wouldn't even allow him that. The grief would fester and stagnate inside him, poisoning every thought that slid through his consciousness until the void eventually took that, too. How could _anything_ be worth getting stuck in here for all eternity?

_It wasn't..._

He didn't want to finish the sentence, but there was no more avoiding it. His eyebrows drew slowly together and up even as his eyelids sank lower. His chest jerked with each breath, but only managed something akin to a weak cough rather than the sob he so desperately needed.

_It wasn't worth it._

Despair flooded in to drown his consciousness. All he'd done had come to this. He made his people die for nothing, and now, trapped in here, a will with no influence on reality and no fellow mind to see himself through, he basically _was _nothing. It was fitting, in a way. Karmic. And it hurt. It hurt it hurt _it hurt so much!_ It was emptiness that he had been trying to escape in the first place! His life had been so full of everything before and yet he'd felt so empty and alone.

Perhaps Yugo had realized that in the final moments of that first confrontation, realized that this place would be the perfect punishment for someone like him, the perfect way to make _damn_ sure he would suffer as long as he was in here. That was the weight of his crimes, for so carelessly throwing away the lives of their people. How long was the sentence supposed to be? Was it one year for every life? One decade? One century? How much longer would he need to live in this empty hell before the punishment was satisfied?

And he deserved it. He deserved it. He would have inflicted the same punishment on anyone who had done the same, had he been in Yugo's place instead. It was unforgivable. He'd been trapped here for thousands of years and yet he'd been ready to do it _all over again_ a few days after being let out. He could have helped Yugo make a place for their people on the World of Twelve, made a fresh start, but he'd thrown the opportunity away for the chance to relieve his guilt. _The guilt_. It just added to the pain, compounded it and made it worse. He had been so desperate to find a way to get rid of it and to flee the crushing boredom that would surely find him that he'd been willing to do it again.

Yugo... Was right. There was nothing else that could be done. It was damage control, trying to pick up what pieces he could and get rid of the thing that kept breaking what they tried to build...

His breathing slowed further, but not by his choice; there was simply not enough energy left to allow even the pathetic coughs that came when he tried to sob. One by one the muscles on his face relaxed as the flow of energy slowed even further. Soon he would be further trapped, a mind in a body that no longer did what he wanted. He was nearing base state already, and soon he would notice his thoughts slow down as well. It always started so gradually you didn't notice, and by the time you realized—to your horror—that your thoughts had slowed to a simplistic crawl you would end up dwelling on it for what felt like a year before realizing there was nothing you could do.

Thoughts became so slow that there was barely room for more than one at a time. There simply wasn't enough energy for several at once. And yet, it seemed the emotions cost very little in comparison. Guilt and despair remained even as the thoughts slogged along on their dogged march, through his mind and off into the void of infinite light.

_It..._

He was...One of the smartest...The most cunning...Innovative...One of the best.

_Wasn't..._

He should have...Found other solution...Better one...Than that...Less careless...Less heartless.

_Worth..._

He was...Better than that...So much...And yet...Did it anyway. Impatient. Consciousness thousands of years old...And yet...So impatient.

_It._

Should have known...Better...Should have...Found a way.

_I'm..._

Didn't mean...It to end...This way. So much lost...So little gained.

_So..._

Hurt everyone. Helped no one. Worthless.

_Sorry._

Nothing worth this. Better to...Have never existed...At all.


End file.
